Robosats, Bisq, Hodl Hodl, Azteco
Discussion
Good places to stack sats 💪
But how to get back into fiat when you want to buy something more expensive like a house and paying with btc is not an option?
Good question. I am in the US and therefore not up to speed on the current environment in Europe or the regulatory changes occurring. So take my response with a grain (or more) of salt.
I *think* you can also sell BTC for fiat on those exchanges but I may be wrong. Someone can fact check me on that.
Moving funds strategically to Strike when you want to sell for fiat may also be an option. Probably will have the same regulatory/KYC'm hurdles as other exchanges but good to double check.
For purchases that are big but not the scale of a home, you could explore options like BitRefil. I have not used them though so cannot personally attest to the quality or experience of their services.
Lastly you can explore bitcoin backed loans as an option. I have mixed feelings about using btc as collateral and have no idea what your options in Europe for that sort of thing are, but may be worth considering. Debt is obviously risky so don't take this as me advocating strongly for the option, but if done carefully it would be a way to leverage your stack for fiat purchases without having to sell your bitcoin.
Thanks mate! Good thoughts about the btc backed loans for bigger purchases. I didn’t see that option 🙏
Oh and yes, you definitely can sell on non KYC platforms like robosats, but only the usual amounts (100-1,000 usd).
Bitrifill is also a good idea! Just found out they offer a card that can be tooped up with btc. Interesting 🧐
You ever used robosats?
I’m always extremely scared about non kyc platforms like robosats and peach to get scammed
Probably an overreaction from my side
The risk is always there but robosats solved this quite good: both parties have to make a security deposit. The seller would loose his sats if he disappeared.
There are also some best practices you could follow to mitigate risk:
Cool! So it works pretty good
In my opinion all p2p solutions have one major issue. how to pay without leaking your own data!
IBAN, Revolut and so on are really bad in terms of privacy / data protection
Agreed
this topic is discussed far too little. cash by mail is great, but not possible with robosats due to the concept
The question is: to trust one single different individual every time you make a trade or trust one government controlled exchange with every trade you make?
If somebody wanted to get the data they could set many offers on p2p
With kyc exchanges pretty much all purchases can be matched together. They get a pretty good picture of what you own and have more detailed information such as your address.
With non kyc buying such as robosats, every single trade is treated as an individual event. Next time you buy or sell you get a completely fresh id. So the potential tracking institution at the other end has less information from you in the first place and it is much more difficult to string all of that together or to „proof“ what you own. Still, risk here is that more different individuals can get hold of your payment data but that’s also true for buying stuff on ebay or other places
The problem is not with robosats ... robosats implementation is pretty solid, but payments like revolut and bank transfer are not
I agree, but still, in the end you have to decide if you would rather expose all of your personal information and transaction history to one big government controlled institution or expose only payment details and a one off transaction to many different entities.
Also consider which is the sweeter honeypot for criminal individuals looking for victims
so the first one I more fore state level attacks but the second is more for casual criminals
If you are going to consider a bitcoin-backed loan, take a look at Firefish.io: peer-to-peer, non-custodial, BTC only.
Ask me for a discount code if interested.
(Disclosure: I work for Firefish 😉)
Yes, this would be the way to go for me. Bitrefill for small amounts that immediately get converted into vouchers. Robosats for mid amounts (for large amounts you can always insert multiple orders or adjust the premium accordingly to speed things up). Bisq for large amounts (for real paranoid prepper atmosphere use cash by mail 🙃).
The most complicated trick here is to always keep a sufficiently large stack of cash aside to avoid situations in which you are forced to sell sats.
So far I haven’t had the need to sells sats via any KYC platform. Luckily.